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How Historians Interpret

“Lincoln’s natural talents for party leadership appeared early. Writing to Captain Andrew McCormick, one of the legendary Long Nine in the Illinois legislature who had helped him move the state capital to Springfield in the late 1830s, a thirty-one-year-old Lincoln noted in a letter that was first published in 1957, ‘I have just learned, with utter astonishment, that you have some notion of voting for Walters.’ William Walters was a Democratic newspaper editor who was competing for a patronage contract from the assembly as state printer, vying against Lincoln’s close friend and Whig ally Simeon Francis. ‘It can not be,’ Lincoln wrote emphatically, ‘that one so true, firm, and unwavering as you have ever been, can for a moment think of such a thing.’”

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Dear Captain:

I have just learned, with utter astonishment, that you have some notion of voting for Walters. This certainly can not be true. It can not be, that one so true, firm, and unwavering as you have ever been, can for a moment think of such a thing. What! Support that pet of all those who continually slander and abuse you, and labour, day and night, for your destruction. All our friends are ready to cut our throats about it. An angel from heaven could not make them believe, that we do not connive at it. For Heaven’s sake, for your friends sake, for the sake of the recollection of all the hard battles we have heretofore fought shoulder, to shoulder, do not forsake us this time. We have been told for two or three days that you were in danger; but we gave it the lie whenever we heard it. We were willing to bet our lives upon you. Stand by us this time, and nothing in our power to confer, shall ever be denied you. Surely! Surely! You do not doubt my friendship for you. If you do, what under Heaven can I do, to convince you. Surely you will not think those who have been your revilers, better friends than I. Read this & write what you will do.